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Mehmet Yaşin (1959-….) Child Dangling His Feet By Drifting Waters - to Aris – Child dangling his feet by drifting waters Bluefish swim through you Little migrant fish - but where do they go in the misty waters - we both hear, in two tongues, the sound of this city wandering in ships but the ships are deaf.
A native-stranger here, a stranger-native there child dangling his feet by drifting waters there’s nowhere o homeland for you or me
Child dangling his feet by drifting waters I ran through surrendering streets sixty christening sweets in my hand running running - but where else could I go - only you were left alive and a cat with different coloured eyes.
Child dangling his feet by drifting waters believe me one grows more beautiful defeated by the world.
Who knowswho are on that wreck of a ship casting such lights in the sea to whom are the Windows open in lamp-lit homes if I said “I love you” would there be one to hear me man is more distant than his star mode solitary than the world. Child dangling his feet by drifting waters figs touched you wherever you went sour-cherry branches black mulberries trees shedding their leaves touched you and me -but where w ego to on our own- child dangling his feet by drifting waters the scattering leaves were our footprints or were they bluefish in the sea.
We froze we froze, face to face two men of white marble bearing the portals if we leave the city will fall İf we stay we should stay we say but the bollards know us both though not the ships they go past our toes blowing screams of smoke - seagulls fly in vain –
All journey in vain child dangling his feet by drafting waters the ship won’t tak ehim no way can he stay in İstanbul however much he longs.
The ship won’t tak ehim no way can he stay in İstanbul however much he longs. (Translated by Saliha Paker, 101Poems by 101Poets An Anthology of Turkish Poetry) |